Pages

Monday, April 20, 2015

Helicoprion is such a mysterious creature and I'm completely enamored by it. After watching the recent episode of River Monsters featuring a variety of prehistoric fish, I had to try my own rendition of this strange beast.

Man, can you imagine? These organisms really existed! They ate and hunted and breathed the waters of an Earth we will never see again. It's crazy how much of an alien world our own home is, but the only distance between them and us is a hell of a lot of time. Thinking about it keeps me up at night, in a good way.

So at any rate, I went with some sailfish features here. Seeing as Helicoprion likely ate squid, they needed to be FAST, slicing at high speed through their prey then just.. sucking them up like noodles! Who needs to chew? Why waste the effort, right? This one's also got a streamlined body, its eyes and nose protected by a hard cartilage ridge, while its long, fleshy snout and jaw focused the target into the saw blade teeth it's famous for. What a celebrity. Just look at that face, a regular Adonis, even with the various scars.